1. Field of the Invention
The present invention falls within the field of house maintenance, cleaning and housework.
The invention relates in particular to a collapsible cleaning device made up of a broom and a pan.
2. Description of Related Art Including Information Disclosed Under 37 CFR 1.97 and 37 CFR 1.98.
In a known way, the sweeping of a surface, e.g. the floor, requires a broom and a pan to pick up dust, debris and other materials laying on said surface. Such a broom has a brush made integral with a handle serving as gripping means and permitting its handling for sweeping, then to pick up by pushing said dust and the like inside said pan.
More specifically, said brush has an elongated shape, receiving at its lower face bristles made of soft or semi-rigid material and fixed at the level of the center of the upper face to said lower end of said handle, providing said broom with a general inverted T shape.
A major drawback is the length of said handle, more than one meter, which, combined with its T-shape, has a size for its storage, which then requires a dedicated space, usually a cabinet.
In addition, the pan is in the form of a rectangular or square parallelepiped-shaped plate, forming the bottom topped on the upper face, on three of its sides, with protruding walls defining a space for receiving the dust and the like. At the front, the face without a wall permits the introduction of the dust into said space when it is being picked up. Moreover, at the level of the rear wall are provided gripping means made integral with said rear wall and said plate.
Such a pan, having a smaller size, is often stored in the same place as the broom, directly on the floor or, in the best case, hanging within the storage cabinet, often leading to a loss of time when looking for it. That is why it has been devised to hang said pan inside the cabinet or directly on the handle, namely by snapping it onto the handle, so as not to separate these two elements.
An example of removable attaching of a pan to the handle of a broom is described in detail in FR 2,760,961.
However, the size of the broom, to the handle of which is attached its pan, remains problematic.
Another example of a pan- and broom assembly is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 345,096 and is comprised of a handle in the form of a single tube, to the lower end of which are directly fixed the bristles of the brush. A pan has a hollow tubular handle, permitting to insert said handle by its upper end and the sliding of said pan until it arrives into locking position at its lower end at the level of the brush.
In this condition, while sweeping the person handling said broom adopts a standing position, using the length of the handle to gather said dust and the like. Once gathered in the form of a pile, this dust and the like must be pushed into the pan, which requires the person to flex down, typically by squatting, and then to handle the broom at the level of the brush and the lower portion of the handle. This handling is tedious because of the tilting of the handle around the grip at the bottom. Most of the time, during the picking up, the person then uses a hand brush to push the dust and the like inside the pan.
In order to cope with this drawback, a telescopic handle has been devised, designed to pass from an extended position into a folded position, and vice versa. An example of such a telescopic handle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,661,868. A brush is mounted at the lower end of a handle comprised of several sections in the form of tubular sleeves of different diameters. In particular, a lower sleeve has a diameter smaller than the inner cross-section of the adjacent upper sleeve. Therefore, each lower sleeve slides inside and along its contiguous upper sleeve.
Furthermore, this document describes a pan, inside which said brush can be positioned in folded position, the handle of said pan being in the form of a half cylinder and the interior of the pan having the shape of a parallelepiped, providing a space for receiving the straight brush of said broom.